[Oe List ...] My prayer

[KroegerD at aol.com]

For my apathy and avoidance of facing up to my participation in my country's 
disgraceful use of power, fear, and death, God, forgive me.

Grant me the courage and grace to uphold the principles of love and justice 
in all of my dealings with the lives of this planet.

Amen   
(see below)

Published on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 by the Boston Globe 
Why Americans Back the War 
by James Carroll
 
THE WAR IN IRAQ goes from worse to catastrophic. Hundreds of Iraqis were 
killed last week, as were two dozen US soldiers. Planned elections in January 
point less to democracy than civil war. Kidnapping has become a weapon of terror 
on the ground, matching the terror of US air attacks. An American "take-back" 
offensive threatens to escalate the violence immeasurably. The secretary 
general of the United Nations pronounced the American war illegal. 
In the United States, an uneasy electorate keeps its distance from all of 
this. Polls show that most Americans maintain faith in the Bush administration's 
handling of the war, while others greet reports of the disasters more with 
resignation than passionate opposition. To the mounting horror of the world, the 
United States of America is relentlessly bringing about the systematic 
destruction of a small, unthreatening nation for no good reason. Why has this not 
gripped the conscience of this country? 
The answer goes beyond Bush to the 60-year history of an accidental readiness 
to destroy the earth, a legacy with which we Americans have yet to reckon. 
The punitive terror bombing that marked the end of World War II hardly 
registered with us. Then we passively accepted our government's mad embrace of 
thermonuclear weapons. While we demonized our Soviet enemy, we hardly noticed that 
almost every major escalation of the arms race was initiated by our side -- a 
race that would still be running if Mikhail Gorbachev had not dropped out of it. 
In 1968, we elected Richard Nixon to end the war in Vietnam, then blithely 
acquiesced when he kept it going for years more. When Ronald Reagan made a joke 
of wiping out Moscow, we gathered a million strong to demand a nuclear 
"freeze," but then accepted the promise of "reduction," and took no offense when the 
promise was broken. 
We did not think it odd that America's immediate response to the nonviolent 
fall of the Berlin Wall was an invasion of Panama. We celebrated the first Gulf 
War uncritically, even though that display of unchecked American power made 
Iran and North Korea redouble efforts to build a nuclear weapon, while 
prompting Osama bin Laden's jihad. The Clinton administration affirmed the permanence 
of American nukes as a "hedge" against unnamed fears, and we accepted it. We 
shrugged when the US Senate refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban 
Treaty, with predictable results in India and Pakistan. We bought the expansion of 
NATO, the abrogation of the ABM Treaty, the embrace of National Missile Defense 
-- all measures that inevitably pushed other nations toward defensive 
escalation. 
The war policy of George W. Bush -- "preventive war," unilateralism, contempt 
for Geneva -- breaks with tradition, but there is nothing new about the 
American population's refusal to face what is being done in our name. This is a 
sad, old story. It leaves us ill-equipped to deal with a pointless, illegal war. 
The Bush war in Iraq, in fact, is only the latest in a chain of irresponsible 
acts of a warrior government, going back to the firebombing of Tokyo. In 
comparison to that, the fire from our helicopter gunships above the cities of Iraq 
this week is benign. Is that why we take no offense? 
Something deeply shameful has us in its grip. We carefully nurture a spirit 
of detachment toward the wars we pay for. But that means we cloak ourselves in 
cold indifference to the unnecessary suffering of others -- even when we cause 
it. We don't look at any of this directly because the consequent guilt would 
violate our sense of ourselves as nice people. Meaning no harm, how could we 
inflict such harm? 
In this political season, the momentous issue of American-sponsored death is 
an inch below the surface, not quite hidden -- making the election a matter of 
transcendent importance. George W. Bush is proud of the disgraceful history 
that has paralyzed the national conscience on the question of war. He does not 
recognize it for what it is -- an American Tragedy. The American tragedy. John 
Kerry, by contrast, is attuned to the ethical complexity of this war 
narrative. We see that reflected in the complexity not only of his responses, but of 
his character -- and no wonder it puts people off. Kerry's problem, so far 
unresolved, is how to tell us what we cannot bear to know about ourselves. How to 
tell us the truth of our great moral squandering. The truth of what we are 
doing today in Iraq. 
James Carroll's most recent book is "Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War." 


Dick Kroeger
65 Stubbs Bay Road
Maple Plain, MN 55359
952-476-6126